


A Simple Twist of Fate

by ivyscribbles (all_choseny)



Category: Sabrina (1995)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gift Fic, Post-Canon, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-24 01:16:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18159533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all_choseny/pseuds/ivyscribbles
Summary: She was so beautiful. When had she gotten so beautiful? He took her free hand and brought it to his lips for a gentle kiss.





	A Simple Twist of Fate

**Author's Note:**

> Fic requested by guest user Jessica & Ana. Ana, try as I might I couldn't not get this past more than a one shot. But if I think of something else, I will write it. I hope you enjoy this fic based on Sabrina (1995).

Paris was a place for magic. It was a city to discover love, fall in love, and be in love. But could Paris heal a heart broken by love? Sabrina escaped to Paris once before to learn how to live with the unrequited love of the only man she had ever wanted. And oh, did she want David Larrabee. She loved him so much that it hurt. Her father thought she was lovesick. A fool for love. Or maybe a fool for being in love with a man who could never and would never love her back. So, she went to Paris to “get over David.” While she was in Paris something incredible happened. 

She learned to live. 

She became a woman in Paris and returned to Long Island not as the chauffeur's daughter, but as a woman in the world and of the world. Still, the moment she saw David she became that knobby-kneed girl again with her head up in the trees overlooking a party that she could only dream of attending. Then he looked at her. He finally looked at her and saw a woman he could love. But that had been a lie, too. For she knew now that David Larrabee would always be David Larrabee and she would always be Sabrina Fairchild. The unrequited love of her youth was a fantasy built on late-night meetings in the solarium with champagne that was far too expensive to waste on two people. David was a dream deferred by reality. That reality became another Larrabee man. 

How exactly did she fall for Linus? When she was a girl, he had a way of looking right through her. Well, he looked at everyone like that. She had never imagined Linus Larrabee would ever notice _her._ Who was she? The chauffeur’s daughter. Yet, she came back from Paris and it wasn’t David who _really_ saw her. It was Linus. And with an unlikely twist of fate he was the one falling in love with her. And she had been foolish enough to believe it was real. 

So, when exactly did she allow herself to fall for him? Perhaps it was the night when they ate Indian food in the dimly lit restaurant with their fingers. She noticed that when he smiled, his lips tilted up ever so slightly one side. Or when he felt out of his element, he hesitated. She saw him vulnerable for the first time and that vulnerability was so endearingly sweet. She had fallen for it hook line and sinker. 

Loving Linus was different from loving David. Much of her relationship with David had been spent wondering how she could ever impress him or get him to notice her. Linus noticed everything. Most of the time loving David hurt. Loving Linus was confusing, but it didn’t hurt. Well, not until now. Sabrina blinked her eyes and stared out the window of her cab. She wouldn’t allow herself to cry over Linus. She had cried over those Larrabee men far too many times to count. Besides, she’d only been in love with Linus for a few days. It was a drop in a bucket compared to a lifetime of loving his brother. But somehow, those few days had overshadowed years of loving David. If only Linus had really fallen for her. Would they be in Paris together now? She imagined them walking hand in hand by the river talking as they had with each other back in the states. Would he be as vulnerable with her here as he had been before? Or was that all a lie, too? 

How could she have misjudged things so badly? 

Sabrina took her bags and looked up at her old building. Paris had healed her once. It would heal her again. 

_Paris is always a good idea you said._

Sabrina froze. It _couldn’t_ be. She squinted into the shadow and like an apparition, he moved from the darkness into the street light. Had conjured him there with the power of her mind? 

_You couldn’t have meant without you…_

No. Not at all. 

++++

They sat in the park beneath the warm sun. The Eiffel Tour served as a picturesque backdrop for their day out in the city together. Linus lay with his head in Sabrina’s lap and listened to the sound of her voice as she read to him in flowing French. He liked the feel of her fingers twirling his salt and pepper locks absently as she read. He enjoyed the warmth of the sun on his face. Linus opened his eyes and smiled up at her. She was so beautiful. When had she gotten so beautiful? He took her free hand and brought it to his lips for a gentle kiss. 

Sabrina paused her reading and returned his smile. “You're staring again.” She said and shifted beneath him. 

 

“Am I?” 

She nodded and bit her lip. “Uh, huh.” 

He did find himself looking at her a lot. Most of the time it was out of sheer awe. How could a woman like her ever find a place in her heart for a crotchety old man like himself? She could have her pick of any one of these French Lotharios. Hell, up until a few days ago she could have had his brother. And yet, here she was with him. 

 

Loving him. 

Linus sat up so he could have a better look at her. “You’re beautiful, Sabrina.” His voice was deep and earnest with emotion he rarely let himself express. 

Sabrina blushed under his intense gaze and looked away. Linus placed a gentle finger under her chin and turned her face to look at him again. Even after years in Paris, he noticed that inside she was still the girl up in the trees. If only she knew what kind of effect she had on him. He had abandoned his well-constructed life to sit in the grass with her in Paris. Linus Larrabee, the man who never took a single day off in his life was sitting in Paris with a woman he’d only recently fallen in love with and hadn’t thought about work once. 

“When you look at me like that…” she began. She looked out over the park and gathered her thoughts. “You make me feel like I’m… the only woman in the world who matters.” 

“And If I told you are, would you believe me?” He needed her to believe him. 

“When you look at me like you are now, I do.” Linus leaned forward and pressed his lips against hers for a gentle kiss. 

_Once upon a time on the north shore of Long Island, there was a very, very large mansion where a boy lived in the footsteps of a girl who would grow up one day and leave him. And when she returned, she would save that boy from himself._


End file.
